David Altmejd

Published by DamianiText by Robert Hobbs. Contributions by Trinie Dalton, Christopher Glazek, Kevin McGarry.

David Altmejd (born 1974) is known for his intricate and highly worked room-size installations and sculptures. Seamlessly moving between a variety of aesthetic modes--from an almost ascetic minimalism in works employing plaster and mirror to works teeming with accumulations of crystals, gold chain, thread, taxidermied birds and animals, among other objects--Altmejd's work offers beautifully wrought meditations on the cycles of life and death, interiority and exteriority, sexuality and spirituality. In the most comprehensive consideration of the artist's work to date, the volume includes four essays by a range of writers, who by providing different entry points to Altmejd's art, animate and engage the rich and diverse ideas that characterize his important practice.The full range of Altmejd's nearly 20 years of work is featured in the book, from his earliest work--where the vast aesthetic vocabulary he has evolved over the years took shape--to his most recent series. Organized roughly chronologically, with an extensive art historical essay by Robert Hobbs as well as pithy contributions from the other esteemed writers forming the connective tissue between expansive sections of color plates, one can trace the many through-lines that the artist has developed and reworked during his career. The book affords a close and intimate view of the inspired and wholly unique work that brought him to prominence in the early 2000s, while also providing a sense of the breadth and scope of his polymath-like creativity and inventiveness in work less well-known or chronicled.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Bookforum

David Velasco

This handsome catalogue—edited by book savant Isabel Venero and featuring texts by quixotic young writers such as Trinie Dalton, Christopher Glazek, and Kevin McGarry—gives Altmejd good face. It also provides a few useful revelations.

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

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CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/10/2014

Featured detail of the sculpture "Man I" (2007) is reproduced from Damiani's massive new retrospective monograph on Canadian-born artist David Altmejd, which launches Monday, May 12 at The Strand in New York. Altmejd will appear in conversation with art historian Robert Hobbs, who writes in his catalog essay, "Altmejd’s work provides a basis for rethinking a vast array of topics, such as art and energy, the ongoing dynamics of becoming, the separation of humans and animals, lucid dreaming, the metaphor of the mirror and the self, the artist as facilitator instead of sole generator of an idea, and the postmodern grotesque," further quoting the artist, "I see my work as post-apocalyptic. The basis is disaster, but then it's about how things grow on top of that." continue to blog

Published by Damiani.Text by Robert Hobbs. Contributions by Trinie Dalton, Christopher Glazek, Kevin McGarry.

David Altmejd (born 1974) is known for his intricate and highly worked room-size installations and sculptures. Seamlessly moving between a variety of aesthetic modes--from an almost ascetic minimalism in works employing plaster and mirror to works teeming with accumulations of crystals, gold chain, thread, taxidermied birds and animals, among other objects--Altmejd's work offers beautifully wrought meditations on the cycles of life and death, interiority and exteriority, sexuality and spirituality. In the most comprehensive consideration of the artist's work to date, the volume includes four essays by a range of writers, who by providing different entry points to Altmejd's art, animate and engage the rich and diverse ideas that characterize his important practice.

The full range of Altmejd's nearly 20 years of work is featured in the book, from his earliest work--where the vast aesthetic vocabulary he has evolved over the years took shape--to his most recent series. Organized roughly chronologically, with an extensive art historical essay by Robert Hobbs as well as pithy contributions from the other esteemed writers forming the connective tissue between expansive sections of color plates, one can trace the many through-lines that the artist has developed and reworked during his career. The book affords a close and intimate view of the inspired and wholly unique work that brought him to prominence in the early 2000s, while also providing a sense of the breadth and scope of his polymath-like creativity and inventiveness in work less well-known or chronicled.